With respect to the new management process we have in the department now, we have structured committees for all of our sectors, and the tourism sector is no different. Tourism is different from parks. We have a parks committee also, although it is made up of the same members, it is just chaired by different persons.
The committee is co-chaired. We have a western chair, who is John Sheehan and an eastern chair, who is Katherine Trumper. The committee is mandated to look at the ways that the department markets tourism. The problems we had in the past, and we had a lot of complaints about, is we were spending our budget primarily on generic advertising. We would have a picture of an iceberg, or a picture of a river and nothing else. Last year, we went to product-specific advertising where we took sectors of the tourism economy and advertised those specifically. We also have an 1-800 number, which we contract out. We provide 1-800 number service across the north out of Yellowknife and we have the Explorers' Guide.
But, none of the money was reaching the regional level where superintendents could interact with operators in the region and spend their money more effectively. So, we struck this committee with regional superintendents involved in it. The regional superintendents look at all the regional input from all the superintendents, look at what type of issues they would like to undertake, allocate a budget to each of the seven regions out of our total budget, and they can undertake activities at a regional level that have impact on them. As the Minister just stated, that creates a regional perspective to what we are doing.
That committee makes recommendations to the management team, and says this is how we should be spending our $1.7 million in advertising, based on the impact and the cost-benefit to the client base and to the communities.